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ALA leaders gathered in New York to meet with several publishers. Back row, from left: ALA Past President Courtney Young; Erika Linke, DCWG cochair and Associate Dean and Director of Research and Academic Services at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries; DCWG cochair and director of Skokie (Ill.) Public Library Carolyn Anthony; and ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels. Front row, from left: Julie Todaro, dean of library services at Austin (Tex.) Community College and 2016-2017 ALA President; OITP Director Alan Inouye; ALA President Sari Feldman; and OITP Program Director Carrie Russell.

ALA Responds to Penguin Random House Ebook Licensing Announcement

By Alan S. Inouye | December 3, 2015

The new structure will phase out the Penguin model of one-year lending and reduce the price for some previous Random House titles with a $65 cap on all Penguin Random House e-titles starting January 1, 2016. “Libraries will be pleased that the combined Penguin Random House license will ensure perpetual access to e-titles, and all will … Continue reading ALA Responds to Penguin Random House Ebook Licensing Announcement →

Simon & Schuster Offers Two-Year Ebook Discount

By Robert C. Maier | November 30, 2015

An updated version of the Big Five Publishers and Library Lending matrix (PDF) is now available. Readers of this blog might want to comment on some questions that come to my mind as I think through the implications of this new approach: How does a library decide whether the one-year or two-year option is right? Why … Continue reading Simon & Schuster Offers Two-Year Ebook Discount →

ALA Affiliate Launches Ebook Award

By Alison Marcotte | November 16, 2015

BCALA President Kelvin Watson says this will be the first ebook award offered by an ALA affiliate. “For many years, we have had self-published authors who wanted to participate in the literary awards,” says Watson, Queens (N.Y.) Library’s director of e-content services and strategy. The award provides the opportunity to highlight diverse voices in the … Continue reading ALA Affiliate Launches Ebook Award →

The Ebook Pricing Wars

By Michael Rockliff | October 20, 2015

Some of that anxiety has been over fear of being locked into terms that might prove economically unviable. That is, of course, a legitimate concern. We could argue, however, that earlier in the life of a technology is, in fact, the best time to experiment. There is much to be learned, and less to lose, … Continue reading The Ebook Pricing Wars →

From 3M to Bibliotheca

By James LaRue | October 8, 2015

So what does it mean? First, it appears that 3M wasn’t finding the business all that profitable. I suspect that’s because although 3M’s interface is arguably far superior to that of OverDrive, our patrons have now gone through the initial agony of learning OverDrive’s app and don’t stray much beyond it. OverDrive (which itself was … Continue reading From 3M to Bibliotheca →

Oyster “Acqui-hired”

By James LaRue | September 22, 2015

What can we glean from this shift? First, despite an appealing design and many feature-for-feature advantages over the Amazon experience, Oyster by itself couldn’t topple the e-tailer giant’s lead. Second, it ain’t over. Google is still in the business of selling ebooks, and Google is a credible contender in the marketplace. Third, it’s hard to … Continue reading Oyster “Acqui-hired” →

Breaking News: Water Is Wet

By James LaRue | September 14, 2015

The result? Sales have fallen. Worstall notes that three big publishers that signed new deals with Amazon—Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster—saw their ebook revenues drop in the last reporting period. Who could have foreseen it? Other than, well, everybody. Raising the price almost always means fewer sales. Lowering the price means … Continue reading Breaking News: Water Is Wet →

Peter Jaszi, a copyright expert on the faculty of American University’s Washington College of Law, discusses the Marrakesh Treaty at IFLA's World Library and Information Congress.

Expressly about the Marrakesh Treaty

By George M. Eberhart | August 20, 2015

Anne Leer, WIPO deputy director for copyright and related rights, said that the reason the treaty was so massively successful was because “IFLA members were so active in promoting it. This is a good example of what we can achieve if we communicate what is needed on national and international levels.” The message was simple, … Continue reading Expressly about the Marrakesh Treaty →

DCL Ebook Report, August 2015

By Robert C. Maier | August 13, 2015

How does that happen if publishers fix the price libraries pay? It’s time for transparency on library ebook pricing from both publishers and distributors. This blog has maintained a chart comparing the price a library pays OverDrive to the consumer ebook price from Amazon as a ratio. For example, in February libraries paid six times … Continue reading DCL Ebook Report, August 2015 →

New Privacy Guidelines for Ebooks

By Michael Robinson | August 7, 2015

The Adobe Digital Editions incident last October was a wake-up call for many people. The new version of the Digital Editions client was transmitting data about the reading habits of users in a way that left readers vulnerable to eavesdropping. Adobe quickly provided a fix to encrypt the data during transmission, but the incident raised … Continue reading New Privacy Guidelines for Ebooks →

The view from Cheyenne Mountain Resort, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Photo by James LaRue)

New Reports: Ebooks, Libraries, and Reading Trends

By James LaRue | July 29, 2015

Our first keynote came from Lee Rainie, director of internet, science, and technology at Pew Research Center. He shared some soon-to-be-published data (keep an eye on libraries.pewinternet.org) that’s worth thinking about. He paired two trends: On the one hand, enthusiasm for the public library and librarians is on the rise. On the other, library use … Continue reading New Reports: Ebooks, Libraries, and Reading Trends →

SirsiDynix booth at ALA 2015 Annual Conference and Exhibition

A Look at Tech

By Marshall Breeding | July 23, 2015

One current trend in library technology aims to improve the engagement of patrons with libraries or to provide tools to help users work more effectively. In many respects, the technologies on display reinforced the theme of the “Library Systems Report 2015,” operationalizing the innovations brewing in recent years, including the increased adoption of Semantic Web technologies … Continue reading A Look at Tech →

Latest Library Links

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Jennifer A. Keach, Jenne M. Klotz, and Galen J. Talis write: “Library leaders at all levels are well-placed to create opportunities for joy in their organizations and to model how to do so with nuance and balance. Toward that end, we explored the multidisciplinary literature and compiled an annotated bibliography for leaders who wish to support joy within groups, organizational change agents who want to create equitable conditions for joy in the workplace, and readers seeking to develop their personal practice of joy. We provide a guide exploring five themes: defining joy, finding individual joy, work and organizational joy, empowering change with joy, and joy-adjacent emotions.”

Library Leadership and Management, June 30
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David Vickers Loertscher and Michelle Young write: “This tutorial introduces school librarians to the use of data visualization tools for documenting and communicating their impact on teaching and learning. By leveraging accessible platforms like Google Forms and Google Sheets, the authors demonstrate how librarians can build dashboards and real-time visual reports to showcase co-teaching, instructional collaboration, and student engagement. The tutorial features real-world examples, highlights common data sources already available to librarians, and argues that dynamic visual storytelling is a powerful alternative to traditional library statistics.”

Learning Hub, June 25
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Robin Camille Davis writes: “It wasn’t until seven years into my career as a user experience librarian that I realized I’d been accidentally excluding a sizable segment of users from my user research. Interviews, surveys, and usability studies favor people who are gifted at oral and written communication. What about people who are more gifted at visual communication? In the context of user research, this participatory design invites participants to design their own response to a given prompt.”

Choice 360 LibTech Insights, June 30
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Stories from communities nationwide come to life on ALA’s new Show Up for Our Libraries interactive site map. The stories illustrate the real-life consequences of potential funding cuts to rural, research, city, state, and university library programs and, in turn, to the hundreds of millions of library users across the country. Services such as summer reading programs, telehealth resources, interlibrary loan, and ebooks have all been affected. ALA collected the stories in conversation with patrons, library professionals, and advocates across the country to better understand the impact of federal funding cuts since the President’s executive order to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, June 25
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On June 27, the Supreme Court upheld the Universal Service Fund, which funds the E-Rate program. ALA issued a statement regarding the ruling that reads, in part, “The ALA applauds the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision to uphold the Universal Service Fund. The system of telecommunications subsidies administered by the Federal Communications Commission includes the E-Rate program, which provides libraries and schools billions of dollars each year for broadband access and connectivity. More than half of all public libraries apply for funding to subsidize the cost of internet connectivity through E-Rate each year.”

AL: The Scoop, June 27
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On June 27, ALA announced its new executive director, Daniel J. Montgomery. ALA’s announcement read, in part, “Montgomery has worked on behalf of public education and the rights of workers for more than two decades. He was elected to a three-year term as president of the 103,000-member Illinois Federation of Teachers in October 2010 and has been unanimously reelected every three years since then. He will start at ALA on November 10. The steering committee chose Montgomery because of his commitment to public institutions, his comfort working across diverse and difficult political situations, his service to both cities and rural areas, and his experience managing a complex, member-driven organization.”
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Oliver Moody writes: “In the €100 million Oodi library, which looms over central Helsinki like a cruise ship from the future, robots called Tatu, Patu, and Veera trundle back and forth between the shelves and the reading rooms. Against this backdrop, foreign visitors might be surprised to see how many children and teenagers are engaged in an almost unsettlingly archaic activity: reading and borrowing books. In the age of TikTok, Netflix, and Candy Crush, it is not just Finland’s public libraries that are booming, but also demand for their physical paperbacks and hardbacks.”

The Times (London), June 20

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